In most states, child care for two kids is more than a family’s mortgage or rent, and according to a recent poll from the Associated Press, more than 75% of adults in the United States say the cost of child care is a major problem.

Kathy Balderrama, owner of the Children’s Safari Learning Center in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa, is well aware of the problem. About half the seats available to children at her two centers in Arizona are empty.

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“We’ve lost a lot of children over the last year,” she said. “A lot of it has to do with the economy. Everything is so expensive.”

Balderrama’s centers care for infants as young as six weeks old, all the way to school-aged children. She said most of the families she serves make too much money to receive the state’s child care subsidy — but not enough to afford child care on their own.

Tuition is around $1,200 a month for one child.

“People are looking for other options,” she said.

That means leaning on unlicensed centers or asking family members and neighbors to pool resources together to share the child care load.

“All the options where there’s a lot more risk,” Balderrama said.

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Child care centers were hit hard during the COVID-19 pandemic and, in response, Congress spent $52 billion to help the industry recover and rebuild.

Arizona got more than $1 billion. But it ran out last year.

More recently, the state legislature put $45 million into the subsidy program that helps low-income families afford child care — the largest investment of its kind from lawmakers in over a decade.

But how much will it help?

Barbie Prinster, executive director of the Arizona Early Childhood Education Association, said it’s still not enough.

“The demand for child care outpaces the funding that we have,” she said.

Even with a historic investment from the state — and with additional money from the federal government — Prinster said more than 9,300 children whose families desperately need the state’s child care subsidy are still on a waitlist.

“Oftentimes, what we find is when it’s too expensive or unaffordable, then the mothers leave the workforce, and that’s not ideal,” she said.

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Some states are doing more to invest in child care. Using funds from extracting minerals, neighboring New Mexico will offer free child care to families regardless of their income. Across the U.S., Prinster said Republicans and Democrats need to start looking outside the box.

“Both sides understand this is a problem that needs to be solved,” she said.

This child care affordability headache for many families comes as the government shutdown continues; Head Start — a key early learning federal program that serves about 65,000 young children across the U.S. — is set to close in the coming days as a result, giving families of young children one less option for support.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

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